The government wants to reform Whitehall in ways that reduce both costs and environmental impact. Joshua Chambers joins civil servants at a round table to discuss how such a virtuous circle might be encouraged

A leitmotif of government over the past few years has been the need for Whitehall to lead the way in tackling environmental issues. And new prime minister David Cameron kept the issue at the top of the agenda when, on only his second day in office, he announced his intention for the coalition government to become the “greenest ever”.

Cameron set a target immediately: a ten per cent reduction in carbon emissions from central government over the next 12 months. However, his announcement didn’t set out some of the details. For example, what will the target be measured against? Will travel emissions be included? And is the Sustainable Development Commission intended to play a role?

Fortunately, Sam Rowbury was on hand to give further details at our round table – which was convened to discuss how government can cut costs while reducing the government’s carbon emissions, and sponsored by global IT business services company Wipro Technologies. Rowbury, who works as director of the Centre of Expertise in Sustainable Procurement in the Office of Government Commerce – now merged into the Efficiency and Reform Group – explained that: “The ten per cent applies to all central government departments – it doesn’t include the wider public sector. It also only applies to the carbon target for offices, so it’s based on the offices’ [CO2] output, not travel or communications.”

As for the Sustainable Development Commission, the answer to this question became clear when CSW broke the story (on July 21, via www.civilservicelivenetwork.com) that the SDC is to lose its funding. To monitor performance against the new targets, said Rowbury, “departments provide data into my team, we collate that and it will then go to a ministerial working group chaired by climate change minister Greg Barker.”

Meeting the ten per cent target would mean tripling the rate of progress of the last few years; the government is certainly showing ambition. And this initiative isn’t a one-off, but “the first phase in a much longer five-year programme”, said Rowbury. “There will be further objectives both in central government and the wider public sector in future years.”

Individual departments have not yet been given their CO2 reduction targets, Rowbury added; the ten per cent reduction is an overall figure, but targets may vary around government. As for non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) such as the National Forest Company, said its chief executive Sophie Churchill, they “have never been given a straightforward method for carbon accounting as an NDPB. We should have been given a methodology to do a carbon account [years ago], and that should have been part of our performance management.”

Anyway, carbon accounting aside, it’s clear that the civil service has to act – and that there’s no cash to fund up-front investment or higher operating costs. At our round table,12 civil servants discussed ways in which they could slash both emissions and spending.

Leadership
Given that those who attended the round table (see box) all have an interest in sustainability, it is unsurprising that they were keen for government to lead the way in reducing CO2 emissions. “We need to lead by example, not just to drive action across our own operations but also across the wider economy,” said Trevor Hutchings, deputy director of the low-carbon economy division at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. “How can we expect individuals, businesses, other organisations to cut their emissions if they’re not seeing that happening across the public sector?”

The head of campaigns and marketing at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Fiona Samson, specifically addressed communication with the public, saying: “All the research shows that you can’t tell the general public to change their behaviour, to embrace a low carbon economy, if government’s not seen to be getting itself in order as well.”

In order for Whitehall to press ahead, participants felt less environmentally-motivated staff must be encouraged to commit to reducing emissions. One way of doing this is to show how greening operations can save cash. Valerie Vaughan-Dick, group finance and estates director at the Department for Transport (DfT), said: “When we look at energy, it’s really important to say: ‘If we save x amount, we could do this with the money’.” Still, she added, even that may not appeal directly enough to staff: “There is this issue about individuals in an organisation where it doesn’t cost them anything [to leave the lights on], and why should they turn them off, just because there’s a poster saying that they should?”

She proposed two solutions: communicating benefits in a tangible way, and setting individuals targets. “It’s one area where we can push down on non-pay costs, and we know there’s pressure on budgets so [cutting energy bills] might save jobs. An alternative is to hit those who breach targets in their budgets.”

Flexible work
Changing staff behaviour does not just mean changing their behaviour in the office, of course. It may mean bringing staff into the office less, instead allowing them to work from home. This is an agenda currently being pursued by transport minister Norman Baker (See interview, p21). No formal initiatives have been announced on this yet, but Baker is pushing for action on flexible working across the civil service.

Cabinet Office IT specialist Chris Chant backed Baker’s objective: “We need to ask ourselves: where do people work?” he said. “There are opportunities here in the normal cycle of replacement of infrastructure for people to work from home now, not for however many million each day to come travelling into London”.

However, Mima Garland, the environment group manager at the Highways Agency, argued that tele- and videoconferencing technology still lets people down too often: “A barrier for government departments, particularly DfT – which we work with so closely – is IT,” she said, “and that’s in relation to the stability of tools, particularly videoconferencing. We do have issues around that, and what I find is where people have what they consider to be an absolutely critical meeting, they’re not sufficiently confident to stick with [IT-based] conferencing. We have all the skills, all the training, but we do get let down by the system.”

If government can get the IT working well, though, there are big potential savings in property as well as travel. Chant noted that with flexible working, “we start to dramatically reduce the number of buildings we need, and we can start decanting into our better buildings. Also, we need really close working between government and local authorities and all these other organisations to make sure that where people do need accommodation, we share what we already have.”

Pooled buildings
The group was split on the potential to pursue a ‘Total Place’ agenda, with public servants sharing buildings and other assets. Chant believes that immediate action is needed, and that the details can be worked out along the way. “There’s so much out there that we can do, and we should get on and do that,” he said. “We have somewhere between 250 and 1,000 data centres for the public sector, and we probably need a dozen. People will tell me I need to worry about whether this server is better than that server, whether the way the network is run is better in this way – or whatever. But I’ll come back and look at that when I’ve got 12 data centres. I’ll try and get it right along the way, but really I figure that 12 that are a bit wrong is still a lot better than 1,000 that are just right.”

However, Churchill – who has engaged at a local level with a Total Place programme – pointed out the complexity of aligning operations. “I suspect that on the surface, shared buildings might look easier than shared budgets and shared programmes – but even that’s proving quite difficult,” she said. “I think it’s partly a sense at the moment that everyone’s baffled with uncertainty: is it time to commit to premises, when you might not even exist in two years’ time? Isn’t there just quite a sense of churn and self-protectiveness around all levels? You have to take into account how bold people are being about any decision.”

When budgets become clearer in this autumn, those uncertainties may fade. Yet Chant argued that the missing ingredient is urgency, not certainty: “The legal complications, the commercial problems – all these things can be overcome as soon as there is real urgency,” he said. “The worry for me is – and I’ve heard this several times – that perhaps the cuts haven’t gone deep enough to get through some of those barriers.”

Private sector working
The scope of the discussion was wider than just the role of Whitehall; participants felt that outside organisations have an important role to play, especially on upgrading buildings. “The next step is to start to look at our existing buildings and our infrastructure, and to say: ‘This was built for another time’,” said Valerie Vaughan-Dick, suggesting one possible source of investment. “We have to have energy-saving initiatives, and in this particular climate we will have to look at partnership deals. Whether it’s partnership deals amongst ourselves, or externally with the third sector or the private sector, we need investments to bring new builds and our existing buildings up to standard.” Meanwhile, Wipro’s Andy Field said that the recognition in the private sector is that risk-reward deals are the way forward; these, he suggested, can lead to benefits on both sides.

Trevor Hutchings, DECC’s deputy director of low-carbon economy, agreed that a profit-share model could attract in private businesses: “You do get to a point where there’s going to need to be a serious retrofit of buildings, and that does cost money. That’s a key workstream for us: how do you fund this activity?” he said. “I’m very much of the view that we need much greater private sector involvement – so we need to make sure that the financing model is attractive to the private sector; that they can come in and look at the cost savings that better energy efficiency will bring.”

Hutchings suggested that faster action to improve government’s own sustainability could boost green business: “The benefits of doing what we’re doing are not just in reducing our carbon footprint across our estate, or in reducing energy bills; it’s also about growing the green economy. There are jobs and green growth opportunities in this agenda, and we want the UK to be a global leader .We are a global leader in some sectors, like offshore wind, and there’s no reason why we can’t also be a leader in retrofitting buildings.”

In straitened times, government is in a good position to press contractors to cut prices and improve their own sustainability. “We should all be squeezing as much value as we can out of the contracts that we’re holding,” suggested Churchill. “We should be squeezing financial value out of those; where we’ve got good relationships with suppliers they are going to be very happy to hold on to us at the moment. We have also not really begun to squeeze the carbon value out of those.”

However, Wipro’s chief executive officer for Europe, Jeffrey Heenan Jalil, sounded a note of caution on this point. “Squeezing existing contracts will tend to constrain your suppliers’ thinking in how they can open up to help; how they can develop beyond the current service that they deliver,” he said.

Bigger picture
Cuts are coming, and while they may give impetus to transformational thinking, those thoughts may not necessarily be focused on cutting carbon. Rowbury pointed to the comprehensive spending review as an opportunity to marry the two objectives; the Treasury, he suggested, should be considering the carbon value of the 25 and 40 per cent spending cut proposals that have been submitted by departments.

Heenan Jallil agreed that if departments are to make a convincing case to the Treasury on this point, they should make the potential carbon savings as visible as possible. But there are also likely to be many emissions savings whose benefits are hidden behind the more painful side of the cuts: with an inevitable decline in staffing and activity, most departments should have falling emissions for a year or two. As Chris Chant said: “The greatest impact you can make is by not doing stuff – and it doesn’t really matter what that is.”

Around the table: concluding ideas from our panelists
Mima Garland, environment group manager, Highways Agency: “What is now being proposed in the Highways Agency is that we collaborate more with our DfT colleagues using robust IT tools.”

Bradley Finn, sustainability manager, Home Office: “We need more ownership of this agenda – not just turning off meters, but everyone thinking in their business planning: ‘Do we need to be doing this?’”

Trevor Hutchings, deputy director, low-carbon economy, Department of Energy and Climate Change: “This issue needs to be in people’s job descriptions, so that we have change agents within departments whose performance is monitored and they are rewarded for what they do.”

Andy Field, partner, government division, Wipro Consulting Services: “Experience says that there will only be a few projects that will release the biggest benefits, and I think organisations should focus on these and tie in carbon-reduction objectives to cost-cutting.”

Valerie Vaughan-Dick, group finance and estates director, Department for Transport: “I think that central government has massive purchasing power and we need to leverage that; we need to ensure that we procure collaboratively to meet our environmental aims.”

Sam Rowbury, director, Centre of Expertise in Sustainable Procurement, Efficiency and Reform Group: “Something we
haven’t talked about today is transparency of data, and making sure
that the data is available to the public so that they can hold departments
to account.”

Jeffrey Heenan Jalil, chief executive officer, EMEA, Wipro Consulting Services: “You have to create a safer and genuinely collaborative environment for the private sector to interact with you and work together on this.”

Sophie Churchill, chief executive, National Forest Company: “I’m not vegetarian – I’m proud to work with the environment department – but all government meals could be vegetarian, and this would significantly reduce our carbon footprint.”

Tom Szekeres, green IT architect, HM Revenue and Customs: “We need to ban internal flights for the civil service. People take a plane because it’s easy and appears to be cheap, but [HMRC] won’t get the revenue on the fuel as they would with a train; and perhaps if people had to take the train rather than fly, they would be incentivised to use videoconferences.”

Geoff Llewellyn, director, UK public sector, Wipro: “What’s chronically lacking is a set of market signals within the public sector as to what it makes sense for individuals and departments to do. What’s needed is a functional equivalent of competition.”

Chris Chant, programme director, G Cloud, Cabinet Office: “You guys need to go back and knock on the door of your estates director and your IT department and check that you’ve got flexible working enabled – because nobody has ever asked me that in the environment or energy & climate change departments, and very few places have it.”

Fiona Samson, head of campaigns and marketing, Department of Energy and Climate Change: “We need to showcase work that does reduce carbon; and more needs to be known within departments about what is already happening.”

Written by Joshua Chambers, CSW